Property Rights And Slavery Essay

After the Civil War, the United States had to determine how to deal with former Confederates and former African American slaves. The emphasis of property rights, specifically land ownership, caused problems throughout Reconstruction (McPherson, 547). An African American freedman stated, “Every colored man will be a slave, & feel himself a slave until he can raise his own bale of cotton & put his own mark upon it & say dis is mine!” (McPherson, 547) Since the Founding Fathers established America on the importance of property rights, African Americans felt that owning land would be the only way to change their status from being enslaved to being free. Americans prided themselves on the ownership of tangible property as well as the property of their own labor. What is the connection between property rights, freedom, and slavery? Slavery is the process of transforming African Americans into a piece of property and so, African Americans believed that they needed to take ownership of the property within themselves in order to be free. John Locke developed the idea of property in the person which he …show more content…
This appropriation of land satisfied African Americans desires and led them to believe that the government would grant them rights (McPherson, 547). However, the happiness of ex-slaves was short-lived because the government took their land away and returned it to the original white owners (McPherson, 549). How did African Americans react to this confiscation of their property? African Americans felt that white Americans continued to view them as an object with no value or importance. For over a year, African Americans worked extremely hard to revive and cultivate the land that had been burned and destroyed during the war only to have it taken away. African Americans may have felt that the government allowed them to have this land because they wanted to use African Americans to rebuild the